Residents across Morgan and Hampshire counties spoke about the need for higher-paying jobs and affordable housing options. They said they’d also like to see increased access to basic services, including broadband and health care.
As part of Mountain State Spotlight’s “Citizens Agenda” approach to covering this year’s elections, we asked candidates running to represent the 89th House district, which encompasses parts of the two counties, about these issues.
Del. Darren Thorne, the Republican incumbent running for his second term, did not respond to interview requests. He is being challenged by Democrat Alyson Reeves, a retired mathematician and computer science researcher. Her answers are below.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Residents across the district said primary care doctors and mental health counselors have months-long waiting lists, which often require residents to seek health care elsewhere. If elected, what would you do to increase access to health care?
Reeves: This amazes me because West Virginia has sort of made an industry out of having older folks move here and retire. And older folks, like myself, tend to be really heavy users of health care, and yet we have a pretty impoverished health care system here. I have to go out to Virginia sometimes. Although I do try to use the Hampshire Memorial Hospital, which is actually one of the better ones in the area as I understand it.
I’m not seeing enough in the way of facilities to provide for all the things that are necessary. We have a really good multi-specialty clinic here. I am imagining, just like with every other job in West Virginia, we don’t pay enough. That’s kind of a given. I think there’s kind of this expectation, in general, of residents not being willing and probably not being able to spend a lot of money on health care but the people who are moving in, like myself, we can spend a fair bit more. I think, on the one hand, we need good, good health insurance for the residents of West Virginia – health insurance that covers the full gambit that people generally need, not the extra stuff, but the essentials. And then that healthcare needs to not be contested so that primary care physicians can get what they need to do the jobs they need. I will also say that primary care physicians should not be struggling with government regulation in order to provide health care. That just seems wrong. The government generally doesn’t know as much about health care as the primary care physician, and certainly doesn’t know as much about each individual case.
So, health insurance that’s on a par with the rest of the nation in terms of payment and such to be able to pay primary care physicians what they’re worth –mental health care providers what they’re actually worth. Better facilities.
Then you have the whole transportation problem. There’s only so much we can blame on the mountains and the hills, but it’s real. And right now, the infrastructure just isn’t there. I think maybe putting the infrastructure in place to start with. State-of-the-art sorts of things to attract people here, and then being willing to hand over the appropriate health insurance payouts so they’ll stay.
Several parts of the counties are still struggling with access to reliable internet. If elected, what would you do to improve access to the Internet?
Reeves: So, so important. Clearly, just mandating that a company come in here and provide internet access isn’t going to do it. Now, we have a lot going on here in terms of broadband expansion through federal government funding, I’m happy to say, and it’s getting there. It really is getting there.
It’s hard to convince anybody, any company, that it’s worth going a quarter mile between houses when they’re only going a small portion of extra dollars to their bottom line. So the whole fiber optic thing is a tough sell here. On the other hand, we’ve got all the mountains that block the signals.
New technology needs to be thought about. I am super happy the federal government is expanding broadband in rural communities. I think it is absolutely essential. It’s essential for education as well as everything else. I think selling that to the average user in downtown Manhattan and saying, “Well, It’s okay. This house out in Levels, West Virginia, it’s going to cost a lot of money to get connected to the internet, but it’s worth it.” That’s going to be a hard sell. It’s a worthwhile sell, but it’s a hard sell. So we need some new thoughts about how to make that work, and in the meantime, we’ll let the federal government do what they do best, which is provide funding to help lift everybody up.
Both Hampshire and Morgan counties have seen increased growth in population in recent years as more individuals are moving into the state from nearby urban areas. Because of this, the cost of housing has exponentially increased, often pricing out local community members. And the limited supply of available housing in the counties has only further exacerbated this. What will you do to help increase the number of affordable housing options in the district?
Reeves: There are a lot of ways to increase housing done tastefully. Low-rise apartment buildings can help. And I stress that tastefully thing hugely. Or duplexes, anything that packs in more people on less land but keeps it reasonable.
In terms of small neighborhoods with single or duplexes – I lived in duplexes for a while, and it’s perfectly reasonable housing. Those kinds of things could be done with prefab housing. I would love, love, love to see some of the trailers replaced with prefab housing. And I would love to piggyback on top of (Vice President and Democratic Presidential Candidate) Kamala Harris’s proposals to incentivize manufacturers to come here. Of course, it’s not just affordable housing, it’s also about building the whole infrastructure behind it and making sure that people can continue to afford it, and making sure that jobs are there for them. So it’s more than just, oh, plunk, a house somewhere. This is not the way it works.
The state needs to invest in its population. That’s the bottom line.
Being a researcher, everything I do would be based on extensive research. I would first go out and talk to the community to find out what the real concerns are. If it’s affordable housing, what kind of housing are we talking about? Are these people who want to start their own farms, which is something different from people who are ready to live in an urban environment and can’t find work there. Those are different things. So what are we talking about when we’re talking about affordable housing? Let’s get to the bottom of that, and then we go looking around, seeing what other people have done and what other countries have done. What’s worked and what hasn’t worked. Then we go back to the people, after formulating some kind of planning and saying, ‘Hey, is this the place to start? How much wiggle room does it give us?” That kind of thing. And then we go and implement something.
Residents also spoke about how many folks travel outside the district and into neighboring states to find well-paying jobs. Teachers were often brought up as an example because they could work in Virginia or Maryland and get at least 10 to 20 thousand dollars a year more than they could get here. How would you bring jobs with competitive wages into the district?
Reeves: Well, especially when it comes to teachers, I will say that we would make this state a unique place to work. Not just pay them more, but make it a much better environment for working here for teachers by making things learner-centered, by redefining what the teacher’s job is.
I think the true value of a teacher is in communication, not necessarily in what they’re trying to communicate. Re-jiggering the explanation until the kid understands it. We teach for mastering not for test scores. We teach with the idea that we’re going to get a solid foundation. We teach with the idea that we don’t group kids by age, we group them by where they are in their understanding of the material.
So as far as teachers go, I would say, yes we need to pay them more, but we also need to rethink the whole public education so that this place becomes like, “Oh, why would I go to to Maryland, where public education is still mired in the 1950s or 60s, and maybe I can get another $5,000 a year, when I can go to West Virginia, where the stress is less, the students are learning more. I’m getting much more value out of my own life for doing the teaching. I feel more appreciated, and my wages may be a teeny tiny bit more,” but recognizing that the cost of living here is less as well. So it’s not all about the money.
Now, as far as the other jobs, bringing jobs here. This is about the workforce. We want to bring high-paying companies here. There’s this kind of elitist attitude that to get a high-paying wage, you either have to have a union job or else you have to go to college. What I want to see at all levels is innovation. So I want every single person, no matter what job they’re doing – they could be picking corn and apples –. they could be pruning and playing in gardens. They could be painting houses, whatever they’re doing, building houses, doing carpentry work, whatever it is I want to have them thinking, “How could I make this better? How could I do this better? Is there a tool that would help me in my job? Is there somebody I could talk to about that tool? Is there some way that I can make myself more efficient?” Those kinds of things people will pay for –companies will pay for. If our West Virginia workforce were that innovative, the companies would come because they’d want that. So that’s my game plan.